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Poet Theodore Roethke dies on August 1, 1963.

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Poet Theodore Roethke (b. 1908), winner of the Pulitzer and Bollingen prizes, is found dead in a swimming pool on August 1, 1963. He was attending a party at the Bainbridge Island estate of Prentice and Virginia Bloedel. Although many suspect alchohol contributed to his death, the coroner later finds that he died of a coronary occlusion.

The Bloedels ordered the pool filled with soil the following day. It was later converted into a Zen rock garden as a silent memorial to the poet, and remains as such on the Bloedel Reserve.

Sources:
Allan Seager, The Glass House (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968); Bloedel Reserve, 1999.

By Walt Crowley, August 24, 1999

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